Reflection from our Pastors

Tuesday, July 1, 2025

Positive Thinking and Entanglement in a time of Advancing Authoritarianism 

Entanglement can bring us to imagine a positive outcome.

My 20 year-old grandson and I enjoyed lunch last week. I was anxious to see him because he recently returned from 4 months in Nepal. He said he is still getting used to being in the US: Nepal was so calm. In our conversation he mentioned quantum entanglement and told me something new. He is aware. I told him that I think of him and all my grandchildren often and pray for them so he must think of me often if entanglement works. To my surprise, he said he did think of me often because he hates doing homework and he reminds himself that his grandmother went to graduate school at age 65 so he could do his homework! We can keep the most positive thoughts for those we love. And as Christians, for those we don’t love.

What does that have to do with the reign of God? “The reign of God preached by Jesus meant a new consciousness of being in the world, a consciousness of relatedness, inclusivity, non-duality, and community. Jesus ushered in a new presence of God, a new realm of God based on the empowerment of community.”3

We believe that God, the Love Mystery and the Mystery of Love, is within each of us

individually and outside of us. We are entangled with the Love Mystery, believing we originated from Love. We are entangled as a community of worshippers, worshiping the Love Mystery together. We are entangled together with God. St. Paul says, “…if we are unfaithful, Christ will remain faithful, for Christ can never be unfaithful.”4 “We are not so much the image of God but that God is at the heart of us.”5

Some Christians understand the reign of God as the Second Coming of Christ when Christ will reign. However, this seems to lack the understanding that God, Christ, is already reigning in our hearts. “The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.”6

The second important element here, I think, is the transmission of what we think and do into that which holds us and all creation. Ramon Panikkar writes, “Being is a co-inherence of the divine, and anthropic being, mutually co-existing, so that one cannot be separated from the other. Divine being is uncreated, yet it mutually co-inheres in created being. God is not created being and created being is not God, but God is one with the created/cosmic being.”7

With everyone and everything connected to each other and to God and God to everything, we might be aware of when we become sad, frustrated, angry, helpless at what is happening in our country and in the world and after giving our deep feelings their moment we can then bring into our awareness, our imagination the goodness we want here and now. We can bring into our awareness a sense of God, although suffering with us also, waiting for us to do something.

Doing something shows the world that we care, we are not passive, we are not waiting to be saved. We know it is ours to do. Some say prayer is no longer enough yet we know that authentic, sincere, prayer from down deep is heard, so the psalmist can lament in Psalm 13, “How long, YHWH, How long? Will you forget me forever…?” 8 but then we act. Contemplation, prayer and action. We have begun to wake up. Let us continue waking up, joining together to bring for a positive outcome at some unknown time.

Let us become “Spirit buddies for each other, become anchors and grounding for one another, create the container for practice for each other, pray for each other, serve as windows for each other into the infinite divine expanse.”9

May the Love Mystery be fulfilled in us for the sake of our wholeness and the wholeness of our world.

Pastor Jane

Further Reading and References

If you are interested in reading about quantum entanglement, here is a link.

Notes: Ilia Delio in defines entanglement as “Quantum phenomenon is which spatially distant particles have correlated properties; unmediated action at a distance. A nonlocal interaction links one location with another without crossing space, without decay, and without delay.10

Understanding quantum physics as phenomenon, we can consider the new philosophy of Phenomenology. Phenomenology ‘investigates two seemingly trivial but in fact profound

topics: the experience of essences and the essence of experience…[opening] a new era for philosophizing, one brimming with possibility.”11

1 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0303264723002459

2 Authoritarianism definition by Britannica: the blind submission to authority and the repression of individual freedom of thought and action. A system of government that no established mechanism for the transfer of power and does not afford their citizens civil liberties or political rights.

3 Delio, Ilia. The Emergent Christ. Orbis Books. 2011, p63.

4 2 Timothy 2: 13. The Inclusive Bible. Rowman and Littlefield. 2007.

5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h_g3VBP5PQ or https://batgap.com/ilia-delio/

6 https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7169-the-eye-through-which-i-see-god-is-the-same

7 Delio, Ilia. The Unbearable Wholeness of Being. Orbis Books. 2013, p 65.

8 Psalm 13. The Inclusive Bible. Rowman and Littlefield. 2007l

9 God, Rabbi Shefa. Torah Journeys: The Inner Path to the Promised Land. Ben Yehuda Press. 2006

10 Delio, Ilia. The Emergent Christ. Orbis Books. 2023